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From Singapore’s high tech congestion management system to New York’s
PlaNYC 2030 to Yokohama’s zero-carbon emissions goal, the future greening of
cities is becoming our global “Plan A” for survival–economic and
species–and will be the topic of the “Global Green Cities” conference in San
Francisco, Feb. 23-25. The invitation-only event will mash up top planners,
designers, strategists, technologists, mayors and financiers on how design,
technology and behavior can facilitate the cross-fertilization of critical
ideas and perspectives.

By now most have heard that cities will be the century’s
Rosetta Stone to mitigating the resource depletion and carbon emissions of
humanity. China alone will add 400-700 million people to its cities by 2050.
Developing nation urban growth is set to double by 2030 the urban footprint
that existed way back in 2000.

If you are old enough to read these words, you will be living in a whole new world than
the one in which you grew up.

The global cities of 2030 will be created with ten
times the speed it took to cobble together the global cities of 2000, which has
acute sustainability implications. That’s why international organizations
ranging from the United Nations to Natural Resources Defense Council are
feverishly creating strategic plans and training for green city innovation
including energy supply and energy efficiency, land use and planning, green
building, water supply and use, food supply and production, green
infrastructure, and enabling information and communications technologies.

The financial sector is well aware that 90 percent of
urban economic growth will come in developing nations, so the leaders of The
World Bank, the IMF and private banks and investment firms are scrambling to
integrate financing in a dizzying array of new life-cycle costing instruments,
revenue sharing agreements and public-private partnerships.

Consider Guangzhou’s new bus rapid transit system (photo above, Karl Fjelstrom), now the
largest in Asia, or Mexico City’s Metrobus system. Both were supported by
private foundations, while Mexico City’s Metrobus also garnered support from an
international and Mexican non-governmental organization. Green economic innovation
is not just occurring in developing nation cities. San Francisco was able to
achieve a leadership role in solar energy projects through a voter-supported
bond measure, while Berkeley created its groundbreaking residential PV solar
financing program through a mortgage-like approach that cuts costs
and financial risks for homeowners.

Global Green Cities will host breakout sessions on the:

design of livable, compact, transit oriented
cities;

technologies of digital, efficient and
low-carbon urban systems;

behaviors and lifestyles of the urbanite

A “Breakout Synthesis” will focus on how planning,
technology and behavior can provide a specific vision for the future.

In a wrap-up discussion of the Global Green Cities plenary
session, I will address the issue “Enabling the Green City of the Future,”
which will look at best practices and driving change in finance, policy and
business. On Friday Feb. 25, the conference goes off-site to study planning for
sea level rises caused by climate change. It will also analyze California’s
planning for its landmark state climate change bill of 2006, AB 32, and its
companion, SB 375, a historic land use planning law trying to prevent further
exurban sprawl while enabling denser, transit-oriented development in existing
communities.

Many others are invited, and I will provide another post reviewing this seminal symposium.

One last sober observation. By all appearances, there
appears to be no “Plan B.”

Warren Karlenzig is president of Common Current. He is a fellow at the
Post-Carbon Institute, strategic adviser to the Institute for Strategic Resilience and co-author ofa forthcoming United Nations manual on global sustainable city planning and management.

About the Author

Warren Karlenzig, Common Current founder and president, has worked with the United Nations (lead co-author United Nations Shanghai Manual: A Guide to Sustainable Urban Development in the 21st Century, 2011); the provinces of Guizhou and Guangdong, China (urban sustainability master planning and green city standards); the United States White House and Environmental Protection Agency (Eco-Industrial Park planning and Industrial Ecology primer); the nation of South Korea ("New Cities Green Metrics"); The European Union ("Green and Connected Cities Initiative"); the State of California ("Comprehensive Recycling Communities" and "Sustainable Community Plans"); major cities; and the world's largest corporations developing sustainability policy, strategy, financing and critical operational capacities for 20 years. Read more here.